The Justice Department entered the long-running struggle over voter eligibility Thursday, warning Florida that its program to check the citizenship status of registered voters violates both Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act and the 1993 National Voter Registration Act.

In a battleground state in a presidential election year, the voter eligibility scuffle may have big implications, especially when you consider that George W. Bush won Florida in 2000 by a mere 537 votes in a case ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The state said its initial check found 180,000 potential non-citizens who may be registered voters.

The struggle over who should be eligible to vote and who shouldn’t – not only in Florida, but in another battleground state, Colorado, and in other states as well – raises important policy questions

Technically the Republicans may be right- if it's illegal for someone to be voting then they shouldn't be counted for any election. it is basically the Democrats saying 'we will turn a blind eye just to get our votes'. of course they could also be shooting themselves in the foot since they are not guaranteed of getting these votes, in which case they'd probably turn around and cry foul.

« Last Edit: June 29, 2012, 02:23:27 AM by CeeKay »

Logged

Because I can,also because I don't care what you want.XBL: OriginalCeeKayWii U: CeeKay

Democrats are *not* trying to allow non-citizens to vote. The Republicans are trying to block actual citizens who are more likely to vote Democratic from voting by setting up "proof of citizenship" standards that millions of Americans can't meet -- particularly poor Americans, old Americans, women and college students.

Non-citizens shouldn't vote. Of course not. But it is *more* important that no actual citizen be denied his or her RIGHT to vote.

There has never been any proof provided of widespread incidents of non-citizens casting ballots. The potential danger there is *not* worth denying so much as one actual American citizen their vote.

Democrats are *not* trying to allow non-citizens to vote. The Republicans are trying to block actual citizens who are more likely to vote Democratic from voting by setting up "proof of citizenship" standards that millions of Americans can't meet -- particularly poor Americans, old Americans, women and college students.

Democrats are *not* trying to allow non-citizens to vote. The Republicans are trying to block actual citizens who are more likely to vote Democratic from voting by setting up "proof of citizenship" standards that millions of Americans can't meet -- particularly poor Americans, old Americans, women and college students.

That's quite the outrageous claim. Got concrete proof?

Yes. Florida's voter purge has already been called into question because of it

Democrats are *not* trying to allow non-citizens to vote. The Republicans are trying to block actual citizens who are more likely to vote Democratic from voting by setting up "proof of citizenship" standards that millions of Americans can't meet -- particularly poor Americans, old Americans, women and college students.

That's quite the outrageous claim. Got concrete proof?

Yes. Florida's voter purge has already been called into question because of it

Democrats are *not* trying to allow non-citizens to vote. The Republicans are trying to block actual citizens who are more likely to vote Democratic from voting by setting up "proof of citizenship" standards that millions of Americans can't meet -- particularly poor Americans, old Americans, women and college students.

That's quite the outrageous claim. Got concrete proof?

Yes. Florida's voter purge has already been called into question because of it

And this is proof how?

It's the latest point in a long-running pattern. The wave of restrictive new voting regulations that have been pushed into law by Republican state legislatures around the country. Shuffling around which forms of photo ID are acceptable, passing draconian new restrictions on voter registration drives, cutting back on early and absentee voting...Florida even went out of its way to specifically ban early voting on the Sunday before the election, conveniently blocking the Get Out The Vote events traditionally held at many African American churches.

And then there's series of "isolated incidents" that occur every year where Democratic-leaning districts suddenly receive a rash of phone calls warning them that the election is being held a day later, or their polling place has been closed and the lines elsewhere are expected to be three hours long, or that police officers are going to be prowling around for unpaid parking tickets and broken tail lights. My favorite variant: a "volunteer from the Democrat's campaign" calls up to thank you so much for your support, but victory has now been assured and you should feel free to relax at home.

The Republican Party isn't responsible for this punctual spate of isolated incidents, of course. It's some shadowy, uncatchable prankster making thousands of robo-calls on their behalf, and they're anxious to decry "dirty tricks by both sides." Republicans couldn't possibly be involved because they're much too busy trying to motivate voters in their own way. Are you a registered Republican, pr0ner? My mother is, and I've seen the push polls they drop in her mailbox every election season.

1) Barack Hussein Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid want to slash the defense budget and rely on Europe to provide for our national defense! Should Republicans continue to stand up for American independence? Y / N

2) Republicans have a bold plan to get our America's economy moving in the right direction! Should they abandon their principles and give in to the failed policies of Barack Hussein Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid? Y / N

So really, it's less of an "outrageous claim," and more of a "factual claim of outrageous behavior." See the difference?

From what I understand, due to past issues in the south with racism-related disenfranchisement, there are a certain number of states (Florida included) that must get special permission before purging voter rolls. That is the issue in play here.

I'll let someone else handle whether or not it is being done for political reasons. What is not debatable is that there are already examples of legal voters getting letters that they will be purged.

I actually don't have a problem with states using the DHS database to check on legal status.

But in this case, it's not hard to read between the lines. As AA pointed out, Republicans have been actively trying to suppress the vote for years and there are literally dozens of examples to be had. If someone doesn't recognize this, then they're an ostrich. The whole effort over Voter ID isn't about fraud since there's never any examples they can point to. It's largely about putting up barriers to entry in poor and minority districts that tend to vote Democratic.

For example, when a study showed that 1/2 of the students at Benedict College in SC (a historically black college) didn't have the required ID for SC and wouldn't be able to vote if their law stands, one of the strategists of the SC Republican Caucus said that's why the law was needed - not because they shouldn't vote, but that now they wouldn't be able to. Or that the GOP in Ohio tried to pass (it was pulled after it became apparent that a voter referendum wouldn't support it) a law that would have forbid poll workers from trying to help people find their correct voting place - the 2nd most common reason for a tossed ballot. Guess who that would impact most? Or how the GOP passed a law preventing early access voting in Ohio a week before the voting weekend...the election night robocalls in MD telling people to take it easy and not vote to 50,000 people in Democratic districts...

The timing of getting this done now isn't coincidental either. They've had 4 years to deal with this issue since the last Presidential election. Trying to do it 6 months in advance of the general election isn't simply an accident - there's no doubt in my mind that if these Republicans had their way, 180,000 Floridians in largely Democratic districts would be wiped off the roles with no good notification system so that when they showed up to vote they'd simply be ineligible.

Why don't they focus their efforts on phantom voters created by faulty machines?

Oh wait, here's a reason:

Quote

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Almost half of Florida’s voters will have their ballots counted this November by machines that can malfunction in as little as two hours and start adding votes.

...

The addition of extra votes can generate overvoting - instances where two or more candidates are chosen on a ballot in the same race. If a voter doesn’t correct the ballot, his or her vote in that race is thrown out.

In 2008, overvoting rates were so high in Florida counties using the scanner that an estimated 11,000 people lost their vote for president, an analysis by the nonprofit watchdog group Florida Fair Elections Coalition concluded.

Miami-Dade County precincts with large numbers of minority and non-English-speaking voters were especially hit hard

Democrats are *not* trying to allow non-citizens to vote. The Republicans are trying to block actual citizens who are more likely to vote Democratic from voting by setting up "proof of citizenship" standards that millions of Americans can't meet -- particularly poor Americans, old Americans, women and college students.

That's quite the outrageous claim. Got concrete proof?

Yes. Florida's voter purge has already been called into question because of it

And this is proof how?

It's the latest point in a long-running pattern. The wave of restrictive new voting regulations that have been pushed into law by Republican state legislatures around the country. Shuffling around which forms of photo ID are acceptable, passing draconian new restrictions on voter registration drives, cutting back on early and absentee voting...Florida even went out of its way to specifically ban early voting on the Sunday before the election, conveniently blocking the Get Out The Vote events traditionally held at many African American churches.

And then there's series of "isolated incidents" that occur every year where Democratic-leaning districts suddenly receive a rash of phone calls warning them that the election is being held a day later, or their polling place has been closed and the lines elsewhere are expected to be three hours long, or that police officers are going to be prowling around for unpaid parking tickets and broken tail lights. My favorite variant: a "volunteer from the Democrat's campaign" calls up to thank you so much for your support, but victory has now been assured and you should feel free to relax at home.

The Republican Party isn't responsible for this punctual spate of isolated incidents, of course. It's some shadowy, uncatchable prankster making thousands of robo-calls on their behalf, and they're anxious to decry "dirty tricks by both sides." Republicans couldn't possibly be involved because they're much too busy trying to motivate voters in their own way. Are you a registered Republican, pr0ner? My mother is, and I've seen the push polls they drop in her mailbox every election season.

1) Barack Hussein Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid want to slash the defense budget and rely on Europe to provide for our national defense! Should Republicans continue to stand up for American independence? Y / N

2) Republicans have a bold plan to get our America's economy moving in the right direction! Should they abandon their principles and give in to the failed policies of Barack Hussein Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid? Y / N

So really, it's less of an "outrageous claim," and more of a "factual claim of outrageous behavior." See the difference?

pr0ner, the proof is that the long, ever growing list of ways Republicans are dreaming up to make voting harder, more expensive, and less representative is being in enacted in the complete absence of any legitimate problem. Every single independent study done on the issue of electoral fraud, including ones commissioned by true believers on the Right, has demonstrated that the "problem" is statistically nonexistent.

Quote from: US News & World Report

And these laws are a solution searching for a problem. Conservatives have long bemoaned the menace of voter impersonation, but the evidence for this threat is nonexistent. George W. Bush's Justice Department spent years ferreting out voter fraud and managed to prosecute not one voter for impersonating another. "Out of the 300 million votes cast [between 2002 and 2007] federal prosecutors convicted only 86 people for voter fraud," Rolling Stone reported. A 2007 study by the Brennan Center found the instances of voter fraud to be literally infinitesimal. "You're more likely to get killed by lightning than commit in-person voter fraud," says the Brennan Center's Michael Waldman. Which only makes sense: That thousands of people are casting illegal votes in others' names while evading determined detection (always managing to choose people who weren't going to vote anyway) doesn't pass the smell test.

When the stated goal of this legislative pattern is to prevent a crime that no one is committing, you start looking for other reasons why Republicans might benefit from laws that disproportionately discourage the poor, the sick, the elderly, college students, and ethnic minorities from casting votes. You don't have to look very hard.

By the way, there are now reports coming in that voters in Wisconsin are receiving anonymous robocalls assuring them that if they're already signed the recall petition, their vote has already been recorded and they don't need to go out to the polls tomorrow.

Democrats are *not* trying to allow non-citizens to vote. The Republicans are trying to block actual citizens who are more likely to vote Democratic from voting by setting up "proof of citizenship" standards that millions of Americans can't meet -- particularly poor Americans, old Americans, women and college students.

That's quite the outrageous claim. Got concrete proof?

Yes. Florida's voter purge has already been called into question because of it

And this is proof how?

It's the latest point in a long-running pattern. The wave of restrictive new voting regulations that have been pushed into law by Republican state legislatures around the country. Shuffling around which forms of photo ID are acceptable, passing draconian new restrictions on voter registration drives, cutting back on early and absentee voting...Florida even went out of its way to specifically ban early voting on the Sunday before the election, conveniently blocking the Get Out The Vote events traditionally held at many African American churches.

And then there's series of "isolated incidents" that occur every year where Democratic-leaning districts suddenly receive a rash of phone calls warning them that the election is being held a day later, or their polling place has been closed and the lines elsewhere are expected to be three hours long, or that police officers are going to be prowling around for unpaid parking tickets and broken tail lights. My favorite variant: a "volunteer from the Democrat's campaign" calls up to thank you so much for your support, but victory has now been assured and you should feel free to relax at home.

The Republican Party isn't responsible for this punctual spate of isolated incidents, of course. It's some shadowy, uncatchable prankster making thousands of robo-calls on their behalf, and they're anxious to decry "dirty tricks by both sides." Republicans couldn't possibly be involved because they're much too busy trying to motivate voters in their own way. Are you a registered Republican, pr0ner? My mother is, and I've seen the push polls they drop in her mailbox every election season.

1) Barack Hussein Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid want to slash the defense budget and rely on Europe to provide for our national defense! Should Republicans continue to stand up for American independence? Y / N

2) Republicans have a bold plan to get our America's economy moving in the right direction! Should they abandon their principles and give in to the failed policies of Barack Hussein Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid? Y / N

So really, it's less of an "outrageous claim," and more of a "factual claim of outrageous behavior." See the difference?

pr0ner, the proof is that the long, ever growing list of ways Republicans are dreaming up to make voting harder, more expensive, and less representative is being in enacted in the complete absence of any legitimate problem. Every single independent study done on the issue of electoral fraud, including ones commissioned by true believers on the Right, has demonstrated that the "problem" is statistically nonexistent.

Quote from: US News & World Report

And these laws are a solution searching for a problem. Conservatives have long bemoaned the menace of voter impersonation, but the evidence for this threat is nonexistent. George W. Bush's Justice Department spent years ferreting out voter fraud and managed to prosecute not one voter for impersonating another. "Out of the 300 million votes cast [between 2002 and 2007] federal prosecutors convicted only 86 people for voter fraud," Rolling Stone reported. A 2007 study by the Brennan Center found the instances of voter fraud to be literally infinitesimal. "You're more likely to get killed by lightning than commit in-person voter fraud," says the Brennan Center's Michael Waldman. Which only makes sense: That thousands of people are casting illegal votes in others' names while evading determined detection (always managing to choose people who weren't going to vote anyway) doesn't pass the smell test.

When the stated goal of this legislative pattern is to prevent a crime that no one is committing, you start looking for other reasons why Republicans might benefit from laws that disproportionately discourage the poor, the sick, the elderly, college students, and ethnic minorities from casting votes. You don't have to look very hard.

-Autistic Angel

In other words, there have probably been more laws introduced to address this alleged problem than there have been of confirmed incidences of it, to say nothing of all the noise being drummed up about it.

And amazingly enough, every one of those proposed laws manages to make it more difficult for citizens who would demographically tend to vote D to vote.

Or maybe not so amazing, as they are all pretty much based on model legislation written by ALEC to do exactly that - reduce the effectiveness of democratic get out the vote efforts.

A federal judge on Wednesday rebuffed the Department of Justice’s emergency request to stop Florida’s attempt to remove people who are not American citizens from its voter registration rolls.

Judge Robert L. Hinkle of United States District Court in Tallahassee said federal laws did not bar the state from identifying and removing ineligible voters from its rolls, though the Aug. 14 primary is less than 90 days away. The laws, Judge Hinkle said, are to block the removal of legitimate voters: people lawfully registered to vote before being eligible for removal, like felons or the deceased. They do not apply to people, like noncitizens, who never should have been on the rolls.

But Judge Hinkle, who delivered his ruling from the bench, chastised the state as having handled the matter cavalierly.

“Determining citizenship is not as easy as the state would have it,” Judge Hinkle said, according to The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. “Questioning someone’s citizenship isn’t as trivial as the state would have it.”

Still, ineligible voters should not be allowed to vote, he said, because it can cause “irreparable harm” to legitimate voters.

pr0ner, the proof is that the long, ever growing list of ways Republicans are dreaming up to make voting harder, more expensive, and less representative is being in enacted in the complete absence of any legitimate problem. Every single independent study done on the issue of electoral fraud, including ones commissioned by true believers on the Right, has demonstrated that the "problem" is statistically nonexistent.

Quote from: US News & World Report

And these laws are a solution searching for a problem. Conservatives have long bemoaned the menace of voter impersonation, but the evidence for this threat is nonexistent. George W. Bush's Justice Department spent years ferreting out voter fraud and managed to prosecute not one voter for impersonating another. "Out of the 300 million votes cast [between 2002 and 2007] federal prosecutors convicted only 86 people for voter fraud," Rolling Stone reported. A 2007 study by the Brennan Center found the instances of voter fraud to be literally infinitesimal. "You're more likely to get killed by lightning than commit in-person voter fraud," says the Brennan Center's Michael Waldman. Which only makes sense: That thousands of people are casting illegal votes in others' names while evading determined detection (always managing to choose people who weren't going to vote anyway) doesn't pass the smell test.

When the stated goal of this legislative pattern is to prevent a crime that no one is committing, you start looking for other reasons why Republicans might benefit from laws that disproportionately discourage the poor, the sick, the elderly, college students, and ethnic minorities from casting votes. You don't have to look very hard.

-Autistic Angel

In other words, there have probably been more laws introduced to address this alleged problem than there have been of confirmed incidences of it, to say nothing of all the noise being drummed up about it.

And amazingly enough, every one of those proposed laws manages to make it more difficult for citizens who would demographically tend to vote D to vote.

“We just recently learned that there are over 900 individuals who had died before the election (and had voted) and at least 600 of those individuals had died way outside the window that an absentee ballot could have been sent, so we know for a fact that there are deceased people whose identities are being used in elections in South Carolina.”

The report confirms what the State Election Commission had found after preliminarily examining some of the allegations: The so-called votes by dead people were the result of clerical errors or mistaken identities.

For instance, sometimes a son had the same name as a deceased father, and poll workers mixed up a dead father with a living son. (This happened 92 times in the initial probe, and then further investigation found seven more examples.)

In 56 cases, there was “bad data matching,” in which the DMV records had the Social Security of a dead person associated with a living voter. The living voter — with a different name and birth date — properly cast a ballot. Thirty-two votes attributed to dead people were simply the result of too-sensitive scanners.

In one case, someone cast an absentee ballot before dying; their vote still counts under the law. In two other cases, people requested an absentee ballot, but died before returning it, so no harm was done. In other cases, the wrong voter was marked as having cast a vote, and then the marks were not completely erased. There were several other types of clerical errors, too numerous to mention. In the end, just five votes remained unresolved after extensive investigation.

Five votes. In a state with an estimated voting population of 3.6 million.

Factor in the costs of passing the legislation, issuing public notifications about the law, fighting the federal government in court, and then rescinding all those public notifications until they could be put back out in 2013, I wonder how many tax dollars were spent in pursuit of those five votes.

So, now that the Voting Rights Act is gone, North Carolina has gone full bore into voter suppression mode:

1) The window for in person early voting, which is critical for working poor people, has been slashed by 40% -- from 17 days to 10.

2) A popular and very effective program that encourages high schools to register students during the enrollment window right before they turn 18 has been eliminated.

3) Same day voter registration has been eliminated.

4) Valid, government-issued photo IDs with the exact same name spelling and address as on the voter rolls will now be required. This is a major hardship on the working poor who do not drive, and those who move often, as well as women.

5) The new law requires any changes to address or name to be updated up to 25 days before the election. This creates a major problem: getting a new photo ID takes between 4 and 6 weeks, or between 28 and 42 days. If you get married or move a month before election day, it may be impossible for you to have a photo ID that matches the information on your voter registration.

The law also raises fundraising limits, eliminates many disclosure requirements, and ends straight party voting.

Surprising no one, all of these changes will disadvantage mostly members of one political party.

So, now that the Voting Rights Act is gone, North Carolina has gone full bore into voter suppression mode:

1) The window for in person early voting, which is critical for working poor people, has been slashed by 40% -- from 17 days to 10.

2) A popular and very effective program that encourages high schools to register students during the enrollment window right before they turn 18 has been eliminated.

3) Same day voter registration has been eliminated.

4) Valid, government-issued photo IDs with the exact same name spelling and address as on the voter rolls will now be required. This is a major hardship on the working poor who do not drive, and those who move often, as well as women.

5) The new law requires any changes to address or name to be updated up to 25 days before the election. This creates a major problem: getting a new photo ID takes between 4 and 6 weeks, or between 28 and 42 days. If you get married or move a month before election day, it may be impossible for you to have a photo ID that matches the information on your voter registration.

The law also raises fundraising limits, eliminates many disclosure requirements, and ends straight party voting.

Surprising no one, all of these changes will disadvantage mostly members of one political party.

So, now that the Voting Rights Act is gone, North Carolina has gone full bore into voter suppression mode:

1) The window for in person early voting, which is critical for working poor people, has been slashed by 40% -- from 17 days to 10.

2) A popular and very effective program that encourages high schools to register students during the enrollment window right before they turn 18 has been eliminated.

3) Same day voter registration has been eliminated.

4) Valid, government-issued photo IDs with the exact same name spelling and address as on the voter rolls will now be required. This is a major hardship on the working poor who do not drive, and those who move often, as well as women.

5) The new law requires any changes to address or name to be updated up to 25 days before the election. This creates a major problem: getting a new photo ID takes between 4 and 6 weeks, or between 28 and 42 days. If you get married or move a month before election day, it may be impossible for you to have a photo ID that matches the information on your voter registration.

The law also raises fundraising limits, eliminates many disclosure requirements, and ends straight party voting.

Surprising no one, all of these changes will disadvantage mostly members of one political party.

I ask this because I don't know (and kind of ashamed that I don't), but is voting a constitutionally protected right? I want to say yes.

Sort of. The right to vote is affirmatively protected in certain situations, but it is not specifically outlined in the Constitution. These laws skirt at the edges by creating requirements that sound perfectly reasonable to, say, middle class Americans, who are the main consumers of political news and the main pool of persons from which judges are drawn. They aren't specifically racist, they just target the poor, who are disproportionately minority and Democratic voters.

Quote

So how is it possible for things like this to happen? Is it solely in the wake of the SCOTUS decision?

Southern states (and a few other Republican-governed states) have been passing laws like this in the past. It appears that Pennsylvania's anti-voter law cost Obama about 1% of the vote in that state last year. Voter suppression has long been a Republican tactic. North Carolina is doing this all at once because until January it had a Democratic governor.

The Justice Department entered the long-running struggle over voter eligibility Thursday, warning Florida that its program to check the citizenship status of registered voters violates both Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act and the 1993 National Voter Registration Act.

In a battleground state in a presidential election year, the voter eligibility scuffle may have big implications, especially when you consider that George W. Bush won Florida in 2000 by a mere 537 votes in a case ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The state said its initial check found 180,000 potential non-citizens who may be registered voters.

The looming potential for fraud in the 2012 Presidential Election was how Republicans justified strict measures in Florida that made it tougher to register voters.

So nine months after the ballots have been counted, where exactly are the culprits of voter registration fraud?

Keep looking because the the Florida Department of Law Enforcement hasn’t found them yet.

In an inquiry into the Florida New Majority Education Fund, which aims to increase voter registration among underrepresented groups, the FDLE concluded it could make no arrests.

In another inquiry, involving Strategic Allied Consulting, a vendor for the Republican Party of Florida, an arrest was made of a man who stole the identity of a former girlfriend's ex-husband. He admitted to fraudulently filling out two voter registration forms.

And that was it.

No investigations this year have found fraud on a significant scale.

Two other cases involving Strategic Allied Consulting remain open, but even Gov. Rick Scott, who loudly sounded the alarm of fraud, appears to have moved on.

I'm genuinely curious: does anyone have any newly updated talking points about why this year's entirely new crop of voter suppression laws is anything other than good old-fashioned election rigging? The whole "voter fraud" thing really isn't panning out.